Susan B. Anthony: biography of this women's rights activist

The history of women's suffrage is broad and demanding. There are many women who have done everything possible to achieve equality between men and women, fighting against a world in which they were infantilized and denied the same conditions enjoyed by the men.

The United States of the 19th century was an ironic country. After the Civil War and the Confederate defeat, rights were recognized for African-Americans, who until few were slaves in the South, but women, whether freed black or white, had little rights recognized.

The suffrage movement was in full swing and in the American context the figure of Susan B. Anthony, a pioneer in the United States in the defense of equality between men and women. Let's discover the life of this feminist activist through a biography of Susan B. Anthony in which we will see her trajectory.

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Brief biography of Susan B. Anthony

Susan Brownell Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts.

. She grew up in a liberal Quaker family and was the second of seven children born to Daniel and Lucy Anthony.

The Anthony couple did not allow her children to play with toys and tried to make their offspring, from an early age, find the "inner light" that the Quaker religion would reveal to them. Because her father was concerned about her children's education, young Susan learned to read and write at just three years old.

Her father was a Quaker professor who at the time ran a cotton manufacturing company, openly opposed to slavery. Susan she was raised in an environment that promoted independent judgment and ethical rigor, but strict breeding was also applied.

Youth and training

In 1826, having Susan B. Anthony only six years old, she and her family moved to Battenville, upstate New York, where she would attend the local elementary school. In addition to attending class, the young woman helped her father in a cotton factory. The Anthonys treated all seven of her children equally, regardless of gender, which cemented the idea of ​​gender equality in Susan's mind.

The Anthonys' ideas were truly advanced for her time, which got Susan in trouble at school., since her teacher refused to teach her various contents because she considered them inappropriate for girls.

This did not please Susan's father, who was a strong advocate that both genders receive the best possible education, which motivated him to found her own school and teach her children there. There he would hire Mary Perkins, a teacher who would be a role model for young Susan B. Anthony.

Susan B. Anthony would complete pedagogy-oriented studies at a Philadelphia girls' boarding school and would also attend a girls' college in central New York state. After finishing these studies, she would dedicate herself to teaching until she was thirty years old., at which time she would begin her political activism.

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Beginnings in feminist activism

Following her formative years, Susan B. Anthony began to enter the world of political activism, guided by the example that her parents had given her and a liberal spirit. In 1848 she joined the anti-alcohol movement., also called the pro-temperance movement, in which she was active for five years.

Being in her ranks, she discovered the profound limitations that being a woman implied in the society in which she had lived, even within a liberal reform organization, and so she decided to found a group exclusively for women: the New State Women's Temperance Society. York.

But The event that would lead her to enter fully into feminism occurred in 1851, the year in which she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton., an already renowned feminist who in 1848 had led the Seneca Falls Convention, the first American suffrage manifesto. Stanton would become Anthony's inseparable companion over time, and both would be feminist leaders for the next five decades.

Beginning in 1882 Susan B. Anthony, along with Stanton and Amelia Bloomer, participated in and organized various campaigns for equality and women's rights. The feminist struggle was initially focused on demands of a general nature but, progressively, it began to focus on achieving universal suffrage. The idea was that by gaining the right to vote the feminist movement could initiate various legal reforms from within.

The campaigns in favor of women's suffrage were also accompanied by protests in favor of changing the labor legislation of that time., raise awareness of the prevailing sexist mentality and denounce the discriminatory customs of North American society. Among her most famous campaigns is her fight against the physical restrictions imposed by fashion XIX century women, promoting its replacement by the use of more comfortable garments, such as bloomers and skirts spacious.

War of Succession and postwar

Since 1854 Susan B. Anthony she combined her feminist struggle with the fight against slavery within the American Anti-Slavery Society until the Civil War began in 1861. At that time, the feminist struggle was practically separated from all political life, since the situation and the military efforts were concentrated on the anti-slavery cause. Anthony founded the League of Loyal Women in 1863, an organization that promoted the freeing of slaves in Confederate lands.

After the war ended, Anthony spoke out publicly against violence against African-Americans, encouraging the suffrage movement to support them. Also, along with Stanton, led various campaigns against New York laws discriminatory towards women, holding numerous conferences throughout the state.

Some time after the end of the war, the suffragism, which had been in favor of the abolitionist cause, understood that the time had come to focus exclusively on its main objective, achieving gender equality and vote. The reason for this was that, despite being anti-slavery, this support had not been reciprocated. Anti-slavery males did not support or approve of female political activism.

It is here that we can speak of a paradoxical United States. This nation, which called itself a country of the free, until very recently had not been for blacks and Native Americans. It had just recognized rights for these two racial groups, but women, whether white or black, had the same citizenship status below men.

In 1868 the Anthony-Stanton tandem she began publishing a feminist weekly in New York City. "The Revolution". In this publication, Anthony focused on demanding equal pay between genders and the improvement of working conditions for New York workers. Back then, men were paid on average five times more than women for doing the same job. This is why she decided to found the New York Association of Working Women.

In 1869 she would found the National Woman Suffrage Association with Stanton., which began to demand the approval of a constitutional amendment that would give women the vote once and for all. Her motivation was because African-American men had just been granted civil and political rights thanks to the approval of two constitutional amendments, specifically numbers 14 and 15, and it is here where the greatest vital episode of Anthony.

judged by vote

In the year 1872 they played presidential elections in the United States. At that time women did not yet have the right to vote, but despite this Anthony, along with 49 other women, They were presented on October 1 at the Rochester civil registry. There they asked to be registered as voters before the impressed gaze of the registry moderators.

Anthony defended her right to be registered as a voter by appealing to the recently passed 14th and 15th Amendments. The schedule of these new laws declared that all those born in the United States were citizens of the country and had certain rights. According to Anthony's arguments, there was no reason to exclude women from such rights, which should include being able to vote in elections.

At first the moderators refused to register them, something that did not make Anthony give up. She quoted great men from the American Constitution and tried to persuade the record keepers. Seeing that they would not let her, she threatened to sue them saying that they were not respecting the new laws. The supervisors couldn't help but agree and agreed to register a total of fifteen women, including Anthony.

Thus, on October 5, the day the elections were held, Anthony went to the polls in Rochester to vote along with eight women, exercising the right to vote that they had demanded for so long. no problem. Anthony voted for the Republican candidate Ulysses S. Grant, since her party had promised to listen to the demands of feminists.

But the story did not stop here. The fact that women had been able to vote generated controversy. On November 14, an arrest warrant was issued for Susan B. Anthony on the charge of illegal voting, prompting the Rochester Deputy Marshal to come to her home and politely ask her to go to the police herself. Anthony refused, saying that she wanted to be treated the same as a man when she commits a crime, by holding out her wrist so they could put the handcuffs on her right there.

Preliminary investigations began on November 29, with Anthony and 14 other women charged. A break of almost a month was taken after questioning the parties involved and, in December, the director of investigations concluded that Anthony had probably violated the law, taking the case to court.

The first trial was scheduled for January and the defendants were released on bail, with the exception of Anthony. She was the only one who refused to pay, since she saw in her arrest a unique opportunity to reach the Supreme Court and make her claims known throughout the country. Thus, she remained incarcerated until January when her lawyer, against her will, decided to post bail. On January 29, the jury found Anthony guilty of illegal voting, and a second trial was scheduled for May.

Now free on bail and awaiting the second trial, Anthony she toured Rochester and the surrounding area to promote women's suffrage. The trial was postponed and scheduled for June. The end result was that Anthony had to pay $100, something to which she refused again and, this time, the judge did not dare to demand payment or lock her up, knowing that Susan B. Anthony would see it as an opportunity to submit to a new trial, stretch the process further and have a greater impact.

Last years

In 1883 Susan B. Anthony traveled through Europe establishing contact with different feminist organizations in England and France. It was on these trips that she came up with the idea of ​​creating an international suffrage organization, something that five years later she would come true during the acts to commemorate the anniversary of the Seneca Declaration falls. She was born the International Council of Women, in which feminist groups from 48 countries would unite.

Along with the work performed by Stanton and Mathilda J. Gage, Susan B. Anthony compiled and published his "History of Women's Suffrage" between 1881 and 1902. She also, along with a group of Christian suffragettes, she worked on the edition of the "Women's Bible", a work that was certainly controversial. It was a compilation of biblical passages in which women appeared and commented on them.

In her later years she had the opportunity to go to England in 1902. It was during her stay in Manchester that she had the opportunity to meet the English suffragette Christabel Pankhurst., daughter of fellow suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. Anthony motivated Christabel to intensify her fight for women's rights.

In February 1906 she made a presentation at the Baltimore Women's Conference and was expected to attend a party in her honor in New York. While en route, however, Anthony contracted pneumonia which, although she momentarily recovered, she fell ill again.

Susan Anthony died in Rochester, New York, on March 13, 1906.her, being 86 years old. Despite her great fight in favor of women's rights and the approval of the female vote, this milestone could not be achieved. get to see in her life in her native United States of hers, but, without a doubt, her struggle served to be approved in 1920.

Bibliographic references:

• Ruiza, M., Fernandez, T. and Tamaro, E. (2004). Susan Anthony biography. In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia. Barcelona, ​​Spain). Recovered from https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/a/anthony.htm on September 17, 2020.
• Stanton, Elizabeth Cady; Anthony, Susan B.; Gage, Matilda Joslyn; Harper, Ida (1881–1922). History of Woman Suffrage in six volumes. Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony (Charles Mann Press).
• Barry, Kathleen (1988). Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-36549-6.